Catching My Breath

It was another busy week around here, but the rest of September looks to be finally settling down. Our family visitor from Arizona, Bruce’s older brother Marv, ended up arriving on Friday and leaving for home on Sunday morning after his high school reunion. He originally planned to stay about a week, but the travel wasn’t agreeing with him (he’s almost 83) and just wanted to get home. So the visit was short and sweet and Bruce and I may or may not have given each other a high five when he pulled out. Don’t judge; there are so many things I am not sharing! 

Other happenings this week that were fun: taking a landscaping class at a local garden center, playing cards with my friends at the clubhouse and picking out all the rest of the things for the upcoming remodel of the two bathrooms, living room floors and fireplace, as well as carpet for the master bedroom. The electrical work in the bathrooms (adding outlets and covering others, changing switchplates) has been completed. I also had a nice lunch out with one of my sons on Friday. Not so fun was my sleep study in order to get a new CPAP machine, but it wasn’t bad. The worst part was having to go check out the equipment at the hospital and then return it the next morning. On Saturday (tomorrow morning as I write this on Friday evening) a friend and I are going to the Jordan Valley Water Conservation Garden Park at the south end of the Salt Lake Valley to check out their water-wise gardens, weather permitting. It’s been raining a lot here lately, so we’ll see. Rather ironic, I think, if we were to get rained out.

But I managed to squeeze in some sewing this weekend, which is always fun. Not too much sewing, but then it was more than I thought would happen. I finally trimmed up the 45 yellow string blocks from the previous week and added another set of 15. So, here’s a total of 60 string blocks, pinned in sets of 15 for our Quilts for Kids chapter to use in kits. 

I always like to look at others’ pictures of quilt blocks or scraps to see if I have any of them in my stash. Do any of these yellow or gold fabrics live in your stash too?

My goal at the beginning of the month was to finish the final four blocks I needed for the Block of the Month class I took over the last year. I hated several of the blocks the instructor chose, so I decided to do my own. Last week I didn’t show any because I never got time to work on them. But this past week I got the last three sewn up. So here are those three blocks, which will each finish at 12” in the quilt.

This next one was easy-peasy, and is a contender I’m considering as one of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks for 2027.

The next block is an RSC27 contender too. I think if I do select it, I’d use a multi-colored print as the center and constant (wherever the maroon dotted print is) and then use 2 different but complementing shades of any given color each month. 

So anyway, here are all 12 blocks together as I begin the assembly of the top. Right now, the only sewn sashings are the vertical strips between the blocks. Everything else is just pinned.

On the right is the backing batik fabric I’ll use, and on the left is what I’ll use as the outer border after I get the sashings and stop border sewn on.

My hope is to get some serious sewing done next week, if the sewing gods will cooperate. I think we have a plumber coming this weekend to move our sprinkler shut-off valve up from the crawl space to under the kitchen sink.  I’m also getting a haircut this weekend and attending our HOA Board meeting on Monday - my first as Vice President. Our President seems to think that I’m going to be his b*tch - he asked me to organize a going-away party for our trash collector person. Seriously? I suggested we meet him when he drives into the complex for his last garbage collection and serenade him with “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” on kazoos! Yes, that’s a joke - and it’s going to remain that way. I’m going to just say I thought he (the President) was joking. We all have more important business, right? Right.

Have a great week, friends. I’m linking up to Scrappy Saturday for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. 

Some Progress

I didn’t have much time for sewing this week. It was the first of two weeks of crazy obligations - HOA meetings, spreadsheets and parties, doctor appointments (for us and for the cats coming up next week), meetings with our contractors for the remodeling that will start soon (2 bathrooms, the living room floors and fireplace, and some new carpet in the master bedroom), family visiting us from Arizona, a landscaping class I’m taking with a couple friends, and the usual weekly to-do’s like walking, cards at the clubhouse (I’m opening and closing for that this month), and Weight Watchers. There are 2-3 things on the calendar for every day until the last week of the month. So far, I’m juggling managing just fine - the walking really helps clear my mind. At this point, I’m really looking forward to winter “slow time”! Or even just the end of the month. 

One thing I did sew on this week on Sunday and whenever I could grab a half hour here or there, was yellow string blocks. The infusion of scraps from Quilts for Kids at the beginning of May before my last knee surgery has my string bins overflowing. I finished 45 string blocks for Quilts for Kids - 3 sets of 15 blocks that will finish at 6”.  I’ll do another set of 15 next week and leave the rest for next year. But I know that they will multiply in the intervening time!! 

I haven’t trimmed the blocks yet, so I’m just going to show you a picture of the blocks pressed with papers removed. I’ll trim them when I’m at the QFK workshop today. And probably sew up some more multi-colored string blocks. 

The only other thing was trimming and binding the Purple Unicorns little quilt. It finished at 40.5x 50”.

That’s about it from here. I’m grateful that our weather has cooled down. Late summer and autumn are so beautiful here in Northern Utah. Even down here in the valley, the colors are beginning to show. Life really is very good. 

Linking to Scrappy Saturday and the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. 

September Gold

For most of the participants in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC), September means purple. But because I worked on purple last month in error, I’m doing yellow and gold in September. It all works out in the end, right? And if truth be told, I’m also revisiting green this month because my green scraps are threatening to take over my sewing room - and I never sewed green string blocks earlier in the year. 

Ok, where to start? …. Let’s just go in chronological order. Last Saturday at our Quilts for Kids workshop, I sewed a set of 15 multi-colored string blocks. I think I’ll have to focus on these strings again, perhaps in December, because my big bin is full and I see at least another couple hundred blocks coming out of that mess! But for now, here are the 15 - oops, make that 16 - blocks from this week.

Last Saturday afternoon and evening we met with my sons and family to celebrate granddaughter London’s 17th birthday, as well as my daughter-in-law Kim’s birthday. Bruce and I went with London and her boyfriend Jaden to the mall where we shopped at Sephora, the make-up store, for her (and me too, LOL). Then we met the rest of the family for dinner at Red Lobster. London and grandpa Bruce named the lobsters in the tank (all I remember were Hank and Phantom). 

There were a couple meetings this week of our HOA Board (I’ve been moved to Vice President after ours quit for health issues), as we finalize the budget for next year (I do the spreadsheets) and meet with the first of the roofing contractors. We’re beginning the re-roofing process next year, a million-dollar-plus  project that comes up every 25-30 years. It will be split into two or three years. Oh joy. 

But between that and fighting with my primary care provider and pharmacy to get my prescription refills taken care of, I did get some “relief sewing” in. Sanity sewing. Whatever you want to call it. 

Here are four yellow Gameboard blocks. They’ll finish at 8”.

I did one Switchplate block in yellow, too, and that was the last one I needed. Those are now complete and will wait for their turn to be sewed into a quilt top.  Anyway, I’ll sew the last four Gameboard blocks next month, probably in brown and gray and/or some other color that’s lacking.

On Friday morning I woke up at 4:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep. So at 5:00 I went in to my sewing room and webbed the chips quilt I showed up on the design board last week. I’m pleased with how it turned out, although the black and white makes it look wavy to my eyes (although it may just be my usual wacky pinning to the design board). I also got a backing sewn, and now it’s ready for Ruby to take and quilt next week.  It’s roughly 48x56”. 

I also decided it was time to focus on and finish the last four blocks of my Block-of-the-Month quilt. I dropped out of the class because I hated the blocks she was selecting, which are primarily designed to sell specialty rulers. So, I got rid of (literally threw away) one block I’d done earlier in the year (attempted without the requisite ruler) that was just plain awful and not salvageable. So that block, along with the last three which I never did from class, meant I had four 12” blocks to come up with. No problem. The background is the same Tula Pink fairy print, and we paired them up with various-colored batiks. 

This is the first of the four blocks I made this week. 

And here are the nine blocks together, not in any particular arrangement.

I’ve finally selected the colors and patterns for the last three blocks. 

My goal is to get one sewn every week this month to wrap it up. I may have to buy more of the background for sashing, or I may find something suitable in the stash. A problem for Future Cathy. 

Later today I’ll visit our contractor’s showroom to give them a push on their bid to install the flooring and re-do the fireplace in the living room. In a few days an electrician is coming to add and move outlets in the bathrooms before the remodeling starts in there. The cats will not be happy - they have become Certified ‘Fraidy-Cats. Whenever anyone comes, they run and hide.  

Anyway, if there is time this afternoon, I hope to get to repotting, trimming and fertilizing houseplants.  I also need to finish and post the signs for our upcoming HOA End-of-Summer party next Wednesday. And Ruby and I are visiting one of our mutual Weight Watchers friends for brunch on Labor Day to see her new condo. So, it’s going to be another fun and busy week. I hope yours is too! 

Fourth Finish for August

Thanks to some quick work by my friend Ruby and her longarm quilting machine, I was able to finish up the Fan of the Library quilt. You may remember that I had planned to quilt it myself on my Bernina 570 (“Nina”), but a bobbin sensor went out and the machine was stopping every few stitches. I took her in for repairs at our local quilt shop (they are the #1 Bernina dealer in the US), and they will have it for about four weeks. Why so long? Because with it being Back to School time, they are busy servicing the sewing machines for all the school districts. So, good thing I have my Brother back-up machine! 

Anyway, after Ruby brought back the re-quilted quilt, I trimmed and bound it, so it will come with me to our Quilts for Kids (QFK) workshop tomorrow, Saturday, where it will be donated with about a dozen other finishes from the last couple months.  Here I tried pinning it up on the design board. 

A close-up of the quilting. 

I thought I’d try getting a better picture of it outside, but then I remembered they were spraying all the lawns in our condo community for bill bugs. So, I had to settle for the courtyard deck. Luckily, the quilts  all get washed before being presented to the kids. 

While I was out in the blazing heat courtyard, I snapped a picture of my Greenstalk garden planter, blooming happily away in the filtered light of the Japanese maple. The area behind it used to be a shade garden, but we lost the shade when they took out our big tree last month. So, it’s cleared out for now and I’ll be replanting some different things this fall and next spring. 

Shopping for plants is, for me, second only to fabric shopping! 

With my trusty Brother machine, “Bob”, I sewed a batch of 15 crumb blocks that will finish at 6”, to be used like the string blocks in quilt kits that QFK distributes. 

The final blocks for my purple August were these simple and quick Switchplate blocks. 

With the purples cleared away, it was time to start on sewing together an old Rainbow Scrap Challenge project. These are my oldest UFOs, and were one of my blocks from the 2021 RSC. The were 4.5” unfinished size blocks that looked like this. 

So this week I began sewing four of each color -  two green with white trim and two green with black trim into 8.5” blocks. Once all the colors were all sewn into bigger blocks, pressed and trimmed I started playing with them up on the design wall. Here is the first layout. 

Hmmm…. Looks a bit chaotic. Bruce said “It looks like the inside of my brain!” (He has ADHD). 

Then I turned some blocks 90 degrees, and this is what appeared. Bruce said “Much better! It looks like the inside of your brain!”

I’ll take it! So, this will be the layout that I’ll begin sewing together. 

But first, tomorrow morning is our QFK workshop, and I usually just bring along string blocks to work on for that. We are having a big family gathering later that evening for the August birthdays of my daughter-in-law Kim and my granddaughter London, who will be turning 17. London is coming over at 3pm and we’re going shopping at the mall. Then her boyfriend and the rest of the family will join us for dinner at Red Lobster (London’s choice). She still loves naming the live lobsters in the tank with grandpa Bruce! I’m looking forward to it all!

Have a great week! Life is good. 

Frustrated

My sewing machine (Bernina 570) has been giving me a few problems lately. I get it serviced every year at the end of the year - usually taking it in during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. But I’ll be taking it in early this year. For the past several months, the automatic thread cutter has been only cutting the top thread and leaving the bobbin thread uncut. When I start to sew again, it tangles. So, I’ve been using a leader or ender (more precisely, a “thread rabbit”) whenever I can to avoid cutting the thread. Ok, a pain-in-the-butt workaround, but not really a big deal. But every once in a while, the machine stops and the message states the bobbin is empty. I got suckered into checking it the first couple times, but I learned that if it does that when I know darn well the bobbin is full, I just press the ‘X’ to close out the screen and can continue sewing. It rarely happened, so I forgot about it until yesterday.

The Fan of the Library quilt top was finished, and I pin basted it on Thursday in order to quilt it myself so I could practice quilting feathers. On Friday, I got the first block done and was pleased enough with the feathers for a first effort.

With a little more practice, it would be easy to make those feathers fluffier and get the two sides to meet in the top of the fan arc, eliminating the need to sew a curl there. OK. I can do this. On to the second fan. That’s when my machine decided that the bobbin thread was empty. I cleared the message, continued trying to stitch the second fan, got another three seconds of stitching in and Stop! Bobbin empty message again. After a few (like a dozen) more of these stops and error messages, I gave up. I switched from my free-motion foot to my walking foot and the same thing happened.  In order to preserve my sanity, to say nothing of my machine and the nearby window, I turned it off and walked away. 

Today I will try to sew something - anything with my regular machine quarter inch foot. Once again I’ll clean and re-thread the machine as I’d done before starting the quilting. Depending on how the machine behaves, it will either go in today for servicing (if it’s not sewing at all) or next Saturday after our Quilts for Kids workshop, which will be at the same store where I get my machine serviced. In the meantime, Ruby said she can finish the quilting (not feathers, but at least something) on her longarm. She’ll take it with her when she comes to “Church of Bernina” on Sunday and return it on Wednesday. I have a backup machine to use whenever I need to, and when the Bernina returns from servicing, I can try again with feathers on another quilt top. And I will definitely try again.

But, everything was fine for the earlier part of the week through Thursday, and I got lots sewn. 

Here are three Rolling Stone blocks that I sewed in purple, my mistaken Color of the Month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. The block on the top right is magenta, not wine-colored as it appears. Purples  are problematic for my iPhone. 

They will finish at 12”. Next I sewed some Hollow Nine blocks with 2.5” squares (6” finished):

And I webbed the Unicorn quilt. That white print in the top has tossed unicorn heads in blue-purple and red-purple, so I took that as license to mix all the matching purple shades and tints in the pieced blocks. 

It’s not exactly “cute”, although it is nicer and brighter in person. The top measures about 40x50”. The best part is that it ate up a lot of older purple scraps on the front and the pieced back. My purple scrap bin is smaller than my other colors, and now the remaining scraps all fit into it. Yesssss! 

And I had another little incident on Thursday. I was walking up to the clubhouse, along a tree-lined street, when a tree branch broke and fell down about 12’ in front of me. It wasn’t a huge branch, and even if I’d been hit, I don’t think it would’ve done much except scare the bejeebers out of me and possibly knock off my sunglasses. But still. I backed up a bit and took a picture - the branch is in the road by the bench and tree in the middle of the photo. 

I dragged the branch out of the street and onto the grass and called one of our groundskeepers. And then I finished walking to the clubhouse (the building in shadow behind the trees) and played cards all afternoon with my friends. 

All in all, it was a good week. One of the highlights was taking a 3.5-mile walk with a friend (probably a bit much for my first serious post-surgical walk), but nothing hurts except the ol’ back! And my hips. And ….  linking up to Scrappy Saturday. Life is good!

Drive-By Post!

There’s not much to report here this week in the way of any news, creative or otherwise. It’s just been crazy and busy - and I developed “pink eye” (conjunctivitis) and an infected tear duct that is finally clearing up with meds. So, minimal sewing and reading for me. But still - housework, yardwork, meetings and appointments. But I do have two pictures to share.

We were invited over to Bruce’s ex-wife’s place for a small family gathering to say goodbye to grandson Deacon (tallest guy in back row), who was leaving on a 2-year mission the next day for his church. He will be in the Kansas City mission.

Back row: Abbie, Gunner (the redhead!) and Deacon - daughter Emily’s kids
Front row (daughter Stacy’s kids): Remi, Oakley, Bear, Evie and Hunter

I sewed another batch of 15 string blocks in purple, but I don’t have a picture. Strings is strings, eh? It’s comfort sewing for me, and I just turn on some music and float away to a happy place. 

The Fan of the Library quilt is now a completed top measuring something like 55x66. Don’t quote me on that. Once it’s quilted, I’ll have the official numbers. I also pieced a backing. 

Now, since I want to quilt this one myself, I have to pin baste it and make some quilting design decisions. I’d like to practice some feathers on it after watching Angela Walter’s feather quilting series on her YouTube channel. Wish me luck.

Today I’m off to work awhile in the courtyard. I've got weeds to hoe, roses to deadhead and fertilizing to do. I may even repot some of my houseplants that need it. And then - sewing all afternoon. At least, that’s the plan. There may also be a Barnes & Noble coffee date in the afternoon. life is good!

Linking to Scrappy Saturday for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. 

Continuing With Purple

Well, I jumped the gun in starting my Rainbow Scrap Challenge for August with purple, because Angela selected yellow instead. But she also said if we’d started with purple, we could continue with it and just do yellow next month. So that’s what I’m doing!

Let’s start with the 6.5” string blocks. This first batch was these dark purple strings. They’re not so exciting, so I didn’t unpin this set of 15 that will go to our local chapter of Quilts for Kids. 

Then I wanted to do a set of 15 light lavender blocks, and I had enough of the center strips with the plusses on them to do that, and managed to eke out the whole set. I did lay these out on one of my sewing room tables, but the lighting sure affects the color. Obviously, the window is to the right, so those blocks on the right are getting the most natural light. The truest colored blocks are in the second column from the right. 

I have more purple strings, and I’ll get to those later in the month.

Next I finished sewing the blocks for my friend Joan who moved back to Massachusetts. It looks very similar to the one I finished last spring for our grandson’s wedding, but this one is just 12 blocks (instead of 20) and measures 48x64”. It’s pinned sideways (wonkily) because my design board is too high for me, yet not long enough. 

I had two quilt finishes this week because my friend Ruby brought them back after quilting them. These will go to Quilts for Kids (QFK), and both are larger than the small ones that we make with a single width of fabric for the backing. I got them squared up (which is going to be hard to believe when you see the second quilt), bound and labeled. 

This first one is the light and dark potato chip quilt made exclusively with pieces that were cut 2.5x4.5”. I am absolutely having a great time working with this shape lately! I photographed this quilt sideways, then flipped it vertically. It measures 48x60”.

Here’s a close-up of the quilting.

The backing is this sturdy red plaid that Ruby bought at an estate sale for us to use for our QFK quilts. There were  about 10-12 pieces, with probably 30 yards or more total. Expect to see a lot of this fabric used as backings! 

This next quilt was difficult for me to photograph, so I laid it out on the kitchen island. The quilt measures 48x61”. 

And I decided to do what quilter Bonnie Hunter does and piece the back with matching scraps. Gotta use up as much as I can of the “Dang, that’s ugly!” scraps and small yardage pieces. I also used the leftover blocks to get them gone!

This is a close-up of the curly quilting. 

The Library Quilt, as I’m calling it (but “Fan of the Library will be its official name) saw a lot of good progress. In the next picture, the side borders are just pinned up and the top and bottom borders aren’t shown. Also, some of the lower horizontal seams aren’t stitched.

Those 12 fan blocks were given to me by our QFK chapter leaders. We get a lot of donated blocks and fabric, so they passed these on to me to “do something with.” I had 2 yards of this lovely fabric depicting children’s books with vintage, colorful covers and they were perfect together.  I’m absolutely loving the warm, rich colors! 

Oh, the layout came about as an accident. I had originally intended to have all the fan blocks facing one direction. But when I finished piecing the first row of three, I realized I’d already messed up. I hate ripping blocks apart, so I made an executive decision (design choice) to alternate double and single fans. And I rather like it! I think the double fans look like a book lying open with its pages fanned out. 

All is well here, but the heat is really plucking my last nerve. My garden is half crispy, despite daily watering - and deep soaking the tree. I hope this type of heat doesn’t become the norm. I may have to start planting cacti! Cousin Kim and her daughter Sarah came over on Wednesday and the three of us went swimming at the clubhouse. Bruce didn’t have any interest in joining us. He jokes that with only one arm, he just swims in circles! My granddaughter London got her learner's permit this week. Her mom sent me a video of London driving in a church parking lot. I can remember doing the same thing with London’s dad! It seems like just last month! 

I hope you have a great week and stay cool (or warm, depending on where you are) and safe! Sharing this post also with OH SCRAP! 

Life is good.